At World Cup 2026, the US Risks a Diplomatic Own Goal

Jules Rimet was born in eastern France in 1873 and raised by his grandfather, a miller, his parents having left the countryside to seek work in Paris. An assiduous student, Rimet was inspired at an early age by Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which demanded better conditions for the working classes. Later, as a qualified lawyer and the third president of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, Rimet took the view that sport could be a vehicle for social good. He believed that football players should be paid — otherwise, how could they afford to train? — and rejected the Olympic insistence on amateurism, which he called “the antisocial pretension of a privileged oligarchy.”

Thus, when Rimet planned football’s first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, it was to be a global competition for all. The day after he arrived in Montevideo, the miller’s grandson was invited to an asado (a South American barbecue) with the president of the republic, Juan Campisteguy. From its inception, the World Cup has been a political event.